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Atypical Response to Caregiver Touch in Infants at High Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Abstract

Atypical response to tactile input is associated with greater socio-communicative impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The current study examined overt orienting to caregiver-initiated touch in 12-month-olds at high risk for ASD (HRA) with (HRA+) and without (HRA−) a later diagnosis of ASD compared to low-risk comparison infants. Findings indicate that infants that go on to receive a diagnosis of ASD may more frequently fail to shift their attention in response to caregiver touch and when they do, they may be more likely to orient away from touch. Additionally, failure to respond to touch predicts ADOS severity scores at outcome suggesting that atypical response to touch may be an early indicator of autism severity.

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Acknowledgments

We are extremely grateful to the families for their invaluable contribution to the Infant Sibling Project. We thank all the students and research assistants who assisted with data collection and coding. We also thank Dr. Rana Abu-Zhaya for her guidance while developing the coding system used for this project. This study was supported by grants from the Simons Foundation (137186) to CAN and the NIH-NIDCD (R01-DC010290) to CAN and HTF.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    Girija Kadlaskar, Amanda Seidl & Brandon Keehn

  2. Department of Psychology, Boston University, Boston, USA

    Helen Tager-Flusberg

  3. Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, USA

    Charles A. Nelson

  4. Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA

    Charles A. Nelson

  5. Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, USA

    Charles A. Nelson

  6. Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Brandon Keehn

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  1. Girija Kadlaskar
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  2. Amanda Seidl
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  4. Charles A. Nelson
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  5. Brandon Keehn
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Contributions

GK, BK and AS contributed to data analysis and manuscript writing. HTF and CAN are the principal investigators of the larger Infant Sibling Project and contributed to data analysis and manuscript revisions. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Girija Kadlaskar.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Research Involving Human Participants and/or Animals

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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Kadlaskar, G., Seidl, A., Tager-Flusberg, H. et al. Atypical Response to Caregiver Touch in Infants at High Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 49, 2946–2955 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-04021-0

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